That would mean reviewing 290,000 votes. 'No way,' deputy secretary of state declares.

Norm Coleman's legal team finished up the first month of the Senate recount trial by asking for what could be nearly impossible.

After weeks of saying they wanted to count every vote, Coleman lawyers reversed course Friday, seeking to sift through every absentee ballot cast in the 2008 election — all 290,000 of them — to see if any now should be rejected.

One hitch, though: It's likely a hopeless exercise.

"There's no way they can do that," Minnesota Deputy Secretary of State Jim Gelbmann said.

The motion came as the recount trial moves into its second month and appeared to signal the Coleman team's growing frustration with the direction of the case. Coleman, a Republican, filed the lawsuit Jan. 6 after a two-month statewide recount gave Democrat Al Franken a 225-vote lead.

To figure out which ballots should be uncounted, the Coleman team would have to sift through thousands of absentee ballot envelopes spread across Minnesota's 87 counties, looking for flaws. But those envelopes contain nothing — the ballots have long since been removed and added to the 2.9 million cast in the race.

Coleman's complaint is that under a Feb. 13 ruling by the three-judge panel overseeing the case, there likely are thousands of "illegal" votes that have been counted. His lawyers already have unsuccessfully asked the court to reconsider its ruling.

"Somewhere, if Minnesotans are to have faith in this process, you cannot have ballots that were declared illegal on Friday the 13th," Coleman attorney Ben Ginsberg said.

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"That's a situation that needs to be clarified for Minnesotans to have any faith in the outcome of the U.S. Senate election results."

In that ruling, the court narrowed the roster of ballots at play in the trial by declaring 12 categories of absentee votes that Coleman wanted reconsidered to be illegal votes. The court will consider several other categories.

His lawyers say the ruling narrowed the field of ballots by a little more than 1,000 to 3,500. Franken's lawyers say a much smaller number is at issue.

Franken attorney Marc Elias said the Coleman team's actions, which included unusually strong criticism of the court over its Feb. 13 ruling, are a signal the former senator is positioning himself to take the case to a higher court.

"They're obviously setting up for some type of appeal or other collateral legal review, rather than focusing on the rules that have been set forth here," Elias said.

If Coleman is laying the groundwork for an appeal, that could dramatically lengthen the time Minnesota would be without two senators. Franken has not been issued an election certificate, and Gov. Tim Pawlenty speculated this week than an appeal could drag the race into the summer.

That would make what had already been an expensive campaign an even more expensive proposition.

Some GOP heavyweights have made recent fundraising pitches on Coleman's behalf, but Ginsberg disputed that the one-term senator is running low on cash to sustain the suit. Politico reported Friday that the Republican National Committee transferred $250,000 to the Minnesota Republican Party to help keep the case alive.

Both candidates have raised millions of dollars for the recount and resulting lawsuit since Election Day. Should Coleman lose, he may be held liable for the costs of the lawsuit.

Friday began with signs the Coleman campaign was turning up the heat: The request to revisit every absentee vote expanded on a request made earlier in the day to reconsider nearly 1,000 absentee votes.

On Jan. 3, at the conclusion of the recount, 933 absentee votes were added to the count. Once opened, those ballots — which both Franken and Coleman previously agreed to under an order issued by the Minnesota Supreme Court — increased Franken's lead from 49 votes to 225.

But with a nod toward potential litigation, the secretary of state's office marked those ballots and envelopes so that they could be matched at a later date, if needed.

Coleman did indeed raise those votes as an issue in the trial, but agreed with Franken on Feb. 3 that they should be counted. The secretary of state's office was ordered to remove any identifying marks from the ballots in order to protect voter privacy.

That process began Friday morning. But Coleman's legal team sought an injunction, arguing that some of those votes now are illegal under the court's Feb. 13 ruling.

But the request may have come too late for many of the ballots. Gelbmann said his office had used a black Sharpie pen to color over any identifying marks on about half the ballots, meaning they — much like the vast majority of the 290,000 absentee ballots cast in the 2008 election — can't be matched to their original envelopes.

The only way to match them up again, Gelbmann speculated, is to do a forensic examination of the ballots to see if their original marking can be identified.

The judges overseeing the case said they would rule on Coleman's motion shortly.

Today, Franken's legal team is required to submit a list of rejected absentee votes it wants reconsidered.